Whispers from the Past

After my folks split up Dad moved to an old stone farmhouse his city-dwelling brother owned. Dad was more or less to be the caretaker of the buildings and property. It was one of the original farmhouses in that area, nestled in a snug valley like a pendant in an ample bosom. Up on one of the hills in the pasture was the family burial ground. There was a low, crumbling stone wall with chestnut trees at the 4 corners. Inside were the limestone grave markers going back as early as Colonial days. Several were in German. Many were worn beyond readability. Many times during visits with Dad I'd hike up the hill to sit in the shade of the trees or look at the old stones as I wondered about the people who rested there. It was my thinking place, my dreaming place, my listening place. I will admit to having a very overactive imagination as a young kid so as Halloween approached my visits became less frequent. I was afraid perhaps the dead might rise and carry me back to darkness with them. Once the dangerous date had passed though I'd resume my trips to the quiet place to imagine the lives of the people resting there.

When I was a little older my grandfather took my brother and me on a field trip of sorts. It was an unusual thing for him to have us by himself and I can't recall the circumstances leading to that arrangement but I do remember the day. He said he wanted to take us to a couple of cemeteries to meet some relatives. My brother and I must have looked a little shocked because Pop-pop asked us if it was going to give us bad dreams. He was well aware of my overactive imagination and how hard it sometimes was for me to shut it off at night. I told him I'd be fine. I understood this was an important day. We spent the afternoon going from graveyard to graveyard. Pop-pop never had to look very hard to find the headstones he wanted. I think he visited often. At each one we'd pause in a few moments of silence before the stories began. Pop-pop would tell us who each person was, how they were related. He'd tell us a bit about the person's character and then give the most memorable stories from their lives. I knew it was a solemn day of acquainting us with his side of the family who we could only know in this way. It wouldn't be until years later that I appreciated the depth of those moments. I have wished many times I had been able to make that trip with him again as a grown person. So yes, I've had a bit of a thing for old cemeteries for a long time.

My trip to Boston motivated me to finally get myself to one of the original cemeteries in my own town. The old Moravian cemetery is the resting place of the town founders. I've been meaning to pay them a visit for a long time but just never had since they are not located in an area of town that is a place where one usually parks and walks around. It's a thoroughfare where busy cars speed past. Friday night I stopped.

The first thing I noticed was the way the tree by the gate beckons you inside if you walk past rather than speed by in a car.

One of the first headstones I found was Susana's with a poetic epitaph at the bottom. I can't read the first line but the last 3 read,
"She was our joy and pride.
We loved her ah perhaps too well.
For soon she slept and died."

Nearby was this headstone. Certainly such sadness was more common a couple hundred years ago but it's never the natural order of things for a parent to outlive a child. I said a prayer for those folks I know personally who have endured this pain.

Here we have John Brown who apparently lived to a ripe old age. 1746-1827. This was the stone with the earliest dates that I found or was able to read. I took note that the flag holder marks him as a Revolutionary War veteran.

Several of the stones seemed to have this flower carving on them. This was the one which still had the clearest image. So many were terribly eroded.

This was the most ornate headstone I saw. I wondered if Mary was a woman of refined tastes or just so beloved that her family wanted her marker adorned like this.

I strolled among so many more stones which were too worn to read. Some were large, others very small. Some were broken. As you see with Mary's, some were quite ornate. There was also a section of very rough cut stone. I was intrigued by how simple and small they were. H.A. Lee's was less than a foot tall.


Finally, as the sun set, I left the graveyard. I thanked the occupants for providing me a quiet place to think. I thought perhaps I heard a whispered a thank you for the visit. The trees standing guard waved me on my way.

Treat Yourself

Friday night all the kids were out of the house. Mr. Lime was also otherwise engaged. It meant I had some time alone when I had nothing pressing to accomplish. I decided to wander around a local graveyard. No, this is not because I was depressed. I was inspired by my visit to Boston and I like the really old cemeteries. After my visit with the dead I walked up the street to my favorite funky ice cream parlor. The sign beckoned me. I had to obey.

Mmmmm....


Saturday morning I slept in then had a leisurely morning giving myself a facial and various other beauty rituals while I listened to Car Talk on NPR. What can I say? I have to counteract the high estrogen stimulation with a little boyishness to maintain balance. It's my idea of a fun Saturday morning.

So, what do you do to treat yourself or when you want to relax?

Da Count-A Stroll Around Boston

Sunday after the food show Jacob had a birthday party to attend. Lisa offered to drop me off wherever I wanted and let me explore the city alone. I asked her to take me to Boston Common and I decided to hike most of the Freedom Trail which leads visitors to various historical sites around the city. The last time I walked the Freedom Trail was when I was pregnant with Diana. It was a hot summer day and there was a noticeable dearth of public restrooms. Although the company I had was pleasant the heat and constantly overfilling bladder made it less than delightful. This time I enjoyed a solo trek through the city and a brisk early Spring afternoon. It was far more relaxing and offered a peaceful time to wander with my feet and my thoughts. Today my count is mostly pictorial just to show you the city through my camera lens. The first two are actually from the day before at Castle Island but I was pleased with the results. Many of the pictures from various buildings are at odd angles or of specific details because some spaces are too tight to back up and get a full shot or else there were so many cars or other distractions that I felt would take away from the picture. It was kind of an interesting challenge.

This just struck me a humorous. I can't help but laugh when a statue has a pigeon on its head.

I love checking out different architectural details.

Park Street Church where abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison gave his first anti-slavery address.

Granary Burial Ground. Paul Revere is buried here as well as the 5 victims of the Boston Massacre. This marker was a little different and a bit more macabre than the ones I saw last year. It intrigued me.

King's Chapel. Built in 1688 on orders by King James II as an Anglican church, a Georgian chapel was later constructed around the original wooden building. Later it became the first Unitarian church in the U.S. I just loved the ironwork.

Old South Meeting House. It was used for public meetings and was the site for many events leading up to the Revolution. During their occupation, the British used it as a stable and hacked its furnishings into firewood. This picture also displays some of what intrigues me about Boston, the way old and new nestle into the city side by side.

Old State House Museum is the oldest public building in Boston. It is in front of the balcony supported by this brace that the Boston Massacre happened.

Old State House

Faneuil Hall was a meeting place and open market. Opposition to British authority grew from the seeds sown during impassioned speeches given here. After independence the abolitionist, women's rights, and temperance movements found audiences in Faneuil Hall.

Another example of old meeting new. On the right is the Bell in Hand Tavern which was established in 1795. On the left is another old tavern where some important historical figures presumably found liquid courage. I forget the name of the place and who sought solace there. I was too busy ambling around thinking and occasionally snapping pictures. The other historical tidbits I am taking out of the $3 tour map I bought. I sound like I know what I am talking about don't I?

Old North Church. It was from this steeple that the two lanterns signaling Paul Revere's ride were displayed. I didn't need the $3 guide to tell me that. I arrived here as dusk was falling and pondered how that beacon must have shown without all the other tall buildings around. Cobb's Hill Burying Ground was locked so there was to be no twilight ambling through that cemetery. The next sites were across the river in Cambridge. I decided perhaps it was time to head back home but thankful for the chance to wander the city and ponder its history. I am very much of the opinion that every American, if at all possible, should make a trip to both Philadelphia and Boston simply for the historical value of those places. I'm grateful I've had the chance to do so.

I-93 bridge. Sun was setting as I left the Freedom Trail to find the nearest T station to take the train back to my cousin's. I stepped out of historic Boston and back into the modern world, which does have it's own interest.

Slice of Lime with a Side of Cousin

Lisa, Jacob and I took a couple of quick little tours here and there when Jacob needed to run off some energy. The first was out to Castle Island to run and scooter around the old fort.

The Speed Racer of Scooters.

He wanted Cousin Michelle to have a turn. Yes, he calls me Cousin Michelle. It's very endearing. Until he could remember my name he would beckon me with, "Hey, Mom's cousin!" I love that kid.

Then it was his mom's turn. Lisa was pleased by this picture because she said it let her know her butt wasn't as enormous as she thought it was. I affirmed that her butt was indeed just fine.

The next day we went to find the headwaters of the Charles River. Since the wind wasn't blowing and the sun wasn't making us squint we decided to try some group photos. Jacob actually took this one. No, I did not crop or otherwise alter his efforts. I think he did a terrific job.

He was a little less enthused when asked to stand for a picture. After all we were outside to let him run....

...and we had just been singing Sir Mixalot's "I Like Big Butts." I don't think his qualifies as big but he wanted to make sure we didn't miss it.

Lisa wanted to get a shot of my big butt and Jacob did not want to be left out. Hhhmm, last years "ass stance" at Harvard, this year's big butt at the head waters of the Charles...what is it about Boston that makes me keep turning the other cheek?

Universe Implosion Averted

A couple of weeks ago I post my Marital Madness Meme. After said post, Suldog made the following comment:

It's positively scary how much your answers to those questions match the very ones I would have given. Even though I definitely still want to have that drink with you next time you're in the area, it's probably best if we never meet. I think the universe might implode.

I responded with an email letting him know I'd be in town this past weekend and asking if he wanted to test the hypothesis. Yeah, I live dangerously. Apparently so does Suldog because he agreed to meet for the sake of the advancement of science. He brought his wife. I brought my cousin and her son. I'd like to say you can thank them for buffering the insanity (and thus averting disaster) that was the meeting of Suldog and Lime but I think that may give them undue credit for levels of sanity they have not achieved themselves. Mrs. Suldog has a hilariously dry wit and it's easy to see why she is so beloved by her husband. She was also sweet enough to wear a lime green shirt and beads in my honor. Now how cool is that? She's kind of shy about her picture being on the interwebs though so I can offer no evidence of such. Just extrapolate by elongating the forehead below into a full face and an attractive female form wearing a lime green shirt and beads. Please imagine her fully clothed as well. I don't think she'd want you imagining her wearing only a shirt and beads. I mean really, we were in public and she's a classy lady.


As for my cousin...well...you've already seen this picture but I'll post it again in case you forgot. Are those the faces of well balanced individuals or escaped mental patients?


With grownups like that around there's really very little hope for future generations. I'll pause while you weep. Pssst, Jacob, quick! While they are distracted you can wipe your fingers on the chair. Personally, I think it's darned impressive that he has not only one but both fingers in up to the first knuckle.

Ok, so we have established that this was a dangerous gathering of minds at the Pleasant Cafe. Even the waitress was a little dangerous. I asked for water with extra lemon and she more than delivered.


I have to say the food was as delicious as Suldog promised. We all had a great time together. Yummy food, good conversation, lots of laughs. As Suldog put it, it was the nicest lunch with relative strangers who seemed more like strange relatives. As a bonus, the universe did not implode, as evidenced by your ability to read this while you sit there in your bathrobe or as you avoid doing any real work.




In the name of scientific exploration we also determined the chemical effects of combining too much lemon with Lime.


In the area of rhetoric we also disproved the adage, "You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose. But you can't pick your friend's nose." If you wish to contribute to further scientific research Suldog and I will accept cash or paypal. Of course, mere expressions of gratitude for the suppression of universal implosion are also welcome.

Mission Accomplished

I pulled back into my own garage shortly before 5:00 pm last night. I knew I'd be returning to one child who stayed home from school puking. I was in the door 30 seconds before I was accosted by another one trying to convince me that $250 on an Airsoft riffle so he can shoot other kids and be shot by them for fun was a good idea. When I disagreed I watched tears roll down his cheeks for the rest of the evening (this has been an ongoing matter of debate for weeks now). When I sat down to get photos off my camera the third child decided that after weeks of me nagging her it was finally time for her to submit some of her financial aid information, online of course. Then the husband came home in a generally disgruntled mood. If it weren't a 5 hour drive I may have turned around and headed back to Boston. Oh, right...Boston....that's what I am supposed to be posting about. Well, I have some fiddling with picture file sizes to do and to decide which of the 150 or so pictures I took to share. but in the meantime let me give a bit of a summary.

I took off Friday morning and stopped in New York to have lunch with a blog pal who no longer blogs. We pretty began reading each other nearly from the beginning of my blog and although he no longer blogs we've kept in touch via email. It was terrific to meet after all this time and enjoy a plate of appetizers together. Since he was on his lunch hour from work and I was in the beginning leg of the trek north I forgot to pull out the camera and document the meeting. You'll just have to take my word that my lunch wasn't with Harvey the rabbit. Thanks for lunch, A.


My cousin Lisa is a chiropractor. I pulled into Boston about an hour before her office closed for the day. She welcomed me with a hug then an adjustment. Finally, she plunked me into a massage chair which I dubbed "Sven" last year when I visited. Ahhh, Sven, your embrace is a welcome respite from the road and demanding people. Run away with me, Sven. We headed home and chilled out with a quick dinner, a couple glasses of wine, and a kid movie with Lisa's son, Jacob. We scrapped plans to go dancing once again. Jacob smiled up at me with his hopeful eyes and big dimples as he asked me to read his bedtime stories. I was helpless against such charms so we crawled in Lisa's bed (since Jacob sweetly gave up his for me) and he took full advantage of my willingness to read story after story.


The dear boy let his mother and me sleep until 10 the next morning. We moved slowly through what remained of the morning before Lisa and Jacob left for an appointment and I headed out on the train to meet Suldog and his wife at the Pleasant Cafe. Lisa and Jacob met us at the restaurant and a good time was had by all. I have a few pictures and more commentary from that particular event, some displaying my derangement in fairly blatant manner. I will share those in another post. For now, let me just say it was an absolutely fantastic time. Suldog and his wife are gracious hosts and funny, funny people. Funny haha, not funny smelling or funny as in barking mad. Once I show you some of the other pictures you may be inclined to regard me as the one who is barking mad though. After lunch Lisa, Jacob and I went to Castle Island so they could show me one of their favorite spots to walk and play. Between the Pleasant Cafe and Castle Island, Saturday was an example of how I love to visit a place and see it through the eyes of people who live there.





Sunday was the food show for Lisa and me. Once again no cameras allowed. Fancy bread bowls, high tech convection ovens, a wall of free booze, wheels of aged Parmesan, and swag bags of ball point pens clearly pose a threat to national security. It was interesting to note the difference between last year and this year. I guess everyone is taking hits because there was far less variety in the food to be sampled this year. There was a lot less meat, a lot more bread, portions were much tinier, and there was much more hoop jumping required. I began to feel a bit like a dolphin performing for fish...but hey, the smoked trout and salmon were worth a trick or two. No complaint s really because my admission to this even was free. It was just interesting to note the differences. Since I don't have any food show pictures here's a shot of Jacob in his new tie dye I took for him.





After the food show Jacob had a birthday party to attend so Lisa dropped me off at Boston Common and I meandered along the Freedom Trail up to the Charles River until it was nearly dark before hopping on the train to head back to their house. The last time I walked the Freedom Trail I was pregnant with Diana. I must say the lack of available public restrooms at that time made it somewhat less relaxing. This time it was a a nice contemplative walk with lovely doses of history breaking into my thoughts as I arrived at each site along the trail. Walking back to Lisa's house from the T station I was struck by the sight of the houses in her neighborhood silhouetted against the sky with their windows glowing welcomingly. It was a nice punctuation for the end of the weekend.

Here Comes Trouble

I'm soon headed up to Boston so my cousin and I can terrorize the city once again.
If you wish to amuse yourselves with tales of last year's adventures feel free.
Here is where Lisa and I encountered the Mad Hatter and some mad herbs.
Here is where I met Snavy and we ate Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney before running amok at Harvard.
If those two posts have too many words here is where I show another side of myself and here is a collection of odd pictures.

Slice of Lime-First Sign of Spring

I have yet to see a robin or the first sprouts of a crocus but yesterday when I picked Diana up from school she remarked that our favorite seasonal ice cream stand was open for business. The sun was shining, she reminded me that this time next year she will be away at college, and asked for some mother/daughter bonding over ice cream. Yes, she was doing a sell job and I bought....ice cream cones for each of us. So for this week's Slice of Lime I present my first cone of the season. (Yeah, she caught me at a bad moment when I took a big bite and was trying to smoosh the ice cream back on the cone so it didn't fall off....this sure isn't the first unflattering picture I've ever posted of myself.)

I scream!
You scream!
We all scream
for ice cream!

The Meme Club

VE has tagged me. I'm not entirely with what since the only rules are that you must not talk about the rules. He is as notorious for shredding memes as I am. In fact, he even has espoused the idea of making a Meme into a Themthem. So anyway, he proceeded to say he was going to list 6 random things about himself and then 6 habits but that only one of each would be true. I figure since I can't even talk about the rules and VE did whatever he darned well pleased I can do the same.

Following that, Desmond Jones tagged me as a friend. I also have other awards that have been collecting dust around here. I have a tendency to be the dead letter office of blog awards, not out of ingratitude or greed. (Hhhmm, as I am looking around I am having a hard time finding where I put them.) All that to say, today I am going to make VE's tag into some sort of bizarre themthem by making my own strange awards.


First allow me to bestow the Fly Guy Award upon Desmond. Anyone who takes a picture of a pumpkin cheesecake with a crack in it that looks like the Greek letter Pi and earnestly presents it to a math teacher exudes geeky cool. I just know he is right now trying to figure out how to replicate those fly specs.

G-man gets this too because the man's house has got to be some sort of museum dedicated to all things retro. He's just always been fly.

Cooper gets it because his mind is twisted toward puns in a similar fashion to mine (Yeah, puns are fly. I made the award. I'm bestowing the award. I get to define the parameters of fly-ness.), he's a drummer, and the graphics in his sidebar speak to me.

NYD gets it because the guy seriously rocks the tie dye socks.




Next, I have to thank VE for his fascinating view of the world. I often leave his blog thinking, "Wow, I never thought of it that way before....my brain may never be the same."

Suldog gets this award too because he can link the most disparate ideas in a single post and it makes sense. Also, he shreds any award he is given and I just can't wait to see what he does to this one.



Well, Logo actually IS a biker chick so she's an obvious winner here.

Susie traipses all over India without a worry and manages to get Kashmiri businessmen to mug for some crazy photo shoot for her blog.

Moose picks up and moves to the Arctic Circle just to mix things up a bit. She's cool in more ways than one.

Jocelyn writes with panache about her beloved's wounded man bits. She lets her wee Finnish boy refer to himself as Paco. And she vents frustration with annoying students by satirizing William Carlos Williams.

Citizen of the World cooks some of the most amazing looking meals, does her own landscaping, and has has close encounters with "aliens" who do their own landscaping.

UPDATE: Mary gets this one too because I love the way she handles the people who feel compelled to find her dates. She finds some hilarious things on the interwebs and often has a slightly skewed way of looking at things....of course, that would qualify for the award where those guys are kissing their own butts. Mary, take the one you want.



This requires some explanation. My dear limelets have described my laughter when I get on a real gut splitting guffaw as "Hyena Mode." They have let me know they can't decide which is more disturbing, the sight of me howling, cackling, and turning purple in the process or the sounds I make in such a state. This award is for all of you who crack me up on a regular basis. There are too darned many of you to list. If I've ever commented on one of your posts telling you how hilarious you were or if I ever responded to some crazy comment you've left me saying you made me spit my drink all over my monitor consider yourself a recipient of this. If you are feeling neglected or just think a slobbering hyena I pilfered from a Disney site and slapped a caption on is something you want in your sidebar have at it. It's yours.



I was going to use this graphic for the folks who make me laugh but those teeth made me think of Moannie's dentist Stavros, and Suldog's dentist (Look! You're getting another one to abuse!), and Furiousball's woes at the dentist. If you guys want the award or want to print it out and send it to your dentists, go for it.




And finally, here's an award which should require no explanation at all.